2010 Pakistan Floods

The 2010 Pakistan floods began in July 2010 following heavy monsoon rains in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, Punjab and Balochistan regions of Pakistan and affected wide parts of Pakistan. At one point, approximately one-fifth of Pakistan's total land area was underwater.[3][4][5] According to Pakistani government data the floods directly affected about 20 million people, mostly by destruction of property, livelihood and infrastructure, with a death toll of close to 2,000. The number of individuals affected by the flooding exceeds the combined total of individuals affected by the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, the 2005 Kashmir earthquake and the 2010 Haiti earthquake. I donated $30 to Médecins sans Frontières despite being unemployed at that time. My prayers go to all the people affected.

FIFA World Cup 2010

This edition of the world cup was a real success. All the South African stadiums were fabulous and we all now know what a Vuvuzela is. At the final match I was cheering for the Netherlands (i dunno, i've always like their orange colour) but it was Spain who made it. That's all good, they very well deserved it for having great soccer teams like Real Madrid and Barcelona, experienced coach Vincente Del Bosque and individual talent like David Villa, Iker Casillas the No.1 goalkeeper and others. It was the first time that Spain reached the final and even win the title to become the second team after Brazil to win the Cup in another continent than their own and still they won it with their local coach. All said, they deserve the international recognition for all their soccer achievements including Euro 2008.

For me the best player of the tournament was Diego Forlan of Uruguay who really mastered the Jabulani Adidas football with repeated goal scoring free-kicks to bring his team in the semi-finals. My thought also goes to Germany, who to my eyes is the best tactical soccer team ever with their eternal third place in recent succeeding World Cups.

Living cell created from custom-made DNA

Imagine having a host cell, emptying its nucleus and replacing it with re-engineered DNA - removing unwanted genes and adding wanted ones among millions others of them so that you can shape the characteristics of that new cell and succeed in making it to replicate. Well that's what happened last week says Craig Venter, a genome pioneer.

The last such milestone was the creation of Dolly the sheep back in 1996 through cloning. This time instead of using the whole genome of a cell, they just customised it using computer-aided genetic engineering.

This great achievement opens new avenues in creating new living organisms which never existed in nature before which can be used to accomplish very specific tasks much harder for machines to do. Craig Venter gave examples such as fuel-producing bacteria, algae that can consume higher levels of carbon dioxide, or more efficient ways of cleaning polluted water.

Of course, in order to take full benefit of such technology mankind should be comfortable once again in the creating & killing of new species of living organisms.

Although there is still no creation of life from scratch, this is more like altering the software that run on the hardware of life, making it do things that no living organisms can do up to now.

Needless to say, such a technique represent a great threat if it falls in wrong hands or even if just a mistake or human error happens. Therefore as in 1996 government regulations needs to be put in place ASAP.

And now the question that remains is: What does it take to create life from scratch? Maybe it's just plain impossible to create life from scratch since when a baby is conceived, he is always conceived from living parents i.e. it takes two already living cells in order to create a new living one.

Or maybe it's possible and that it takes some variables that are still unknown to mankind. But Im still convinced that there should be a way how it all started, may it be from asteroids or whatever, it can surely be reproduced successfully in a lab à la LHC

Volcano Eyjafjallajokull rules

The Icelandic volcano provoked an unprecedented havoc across the airline industry in late April 2010. Intense volcanic ash cloud and south eastern winds caused  major Europe airports to be grounded including Heathrow, Nordic countries, France, Spain & even Russia. They remain grounded for up to a week while the airline companies suffocated economically day by day leaving millions of passengers stranded all over the world.

This reminds me of 2 things. 1) Nature always has the last word.  2) The increasing dependency we have on airline travel.

This make me think that we are often over-dependent on a particular system. Just imagine a 5-day total internet blackout! Even if that's less probable, it remains scary!

How about the Yellowstone caldera erupting?  Well, forget it!